URLs. Contemporary sizzling URLs.
Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Coverage Its Chatbot Made Up [Ashley Belanger/Wired] – Air Canada’s chatbot gave a buyer incorrect details about bereavement fare insurance policies, and a court docket held the airline accountable. Unclear whether or not the chatbot was really LLM powered – or by whom – but it surely’s a enjoyable piece of case legislation now (not less than in Canada) for GPT hallucinations.
The chatbot supplied inaccurate data, encouraging Moffatt to ebook a flight instantly after which request a refund inside 90 days. In actuality, Air Canada’s coverage explicitly said that the airline is not going to present refunds for bereavement journey after the flight is booked. Moffatt dutifully tried to comply with the chatbot’s recommendation and request a refund however was shocked that the request was rejected.
One of the best founders don’t care if an investor is “founder pleasant” [Harry Glaser/Modelbit] – Repeat founder Harry Glaser desires just a few issues from his VCs however “founder pleasant” ain’t one in every of them [disclosure: we’re investors in his ML deployment startup ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ].
Founders need to win so badly they put themselves in an all-in place. The traits an investor can show that make them irresistible to founders are: (1) A monitor report of profitable, (2) a deeply-held, thoughtfully-justified perception that this enterprise can be a winner, and (3) an unbroken historical past of high-integrity conduct when the chips are down.
An old-school Las Vegas bookie takes on a brand new period of sports activities betting [Danny Funt/WaPo] – At all times love a ‘these guys are nonetheless doing it the way in which it was’ piece. South Level, one of many final household run inns in Las Vegas, does 3/4 of its sports activities betting enterprise IRL and nonetheless takes extra motion than another establishment within the state.
Requested about some nationwide sportsbooks profiting as a lot as $30 for each $100 wagered whereas the South Level holds about $5 for each $100, Gaughan informed a narrative from early in his profession. Many riverboat passengers, he observed, spent a lot of the journey sitting round glumly after going bust on slots. Gaughan lowered slot maintain percentages so prospects solely ran out of cash as their boat was docking.
The loss of life (once more) of the web as we all know it [Noah Smith/Noahpinion] – Feeds, enshittification, AI slop and disinformation is making the patron net a large number. However perhaps the trendy web must die? Or not less than remodel itself.
So the web as we all know it — social media websites and the Net — is changing into a typically worse place to hang around. Wading by oceans of ads, algorithmic randomness antisemitic Russian bots, Tiktok-poisoned shouters, AI slop, and deepfakes is simply not a enjoyable approach to spend anybody’s treasured restricted lifetime.
Higher, maybe, to easily withdraw from the general public web — to spend one’s time chatting instantly with associates and in small teams, having enjoyable offline, and perhaps watching TV or studying a ebook or a Substack. That form of human interplay labored effective earlier than the web, and it’ll most likely work simply effective as we speak. Which is why although the entire traits I discussed are damaging, I’m optimistic about the way forward for our digital communications and our media food plan. Perhaps sometime historians will look again on the period once we lived our lives on social networking websites as a short anomaly.
An Investor’s Perspective on the Worth of Common Verify-Ins [Charles Hudson/Precursor Ventures] – Going past the one:many electronic mail replace for why fast however ongoing conversations could be mutually useful.
As an investor, I don’t know, ex-ante, which of the 10-12 conferences per yr with a given firm can be impactful. My expertise is that neither I nor the corporate can consider the worth of any of these conferences in actual time; the worth is usually solely recognized after the actual fact with the good thing about hindsight. Normally, 2 or 3 conferences every year will tackle choices materials to the corporate’s end result. The opposite conferences permit us to get to know one another and (hopefully) construct mutual belief and a shared understanding of the issue the founders are tackling.
